Written by

Free Press correspondent

Fresh Czech Christmas cookies just out of the oven. / DAMIR ALISA/ For the Free Press

More

ADVERTISEMENT

Ostensibly, it was the meat grinder that brought them together.

But the friends baking traditional Czech Christmas cookies recently at Monika Ursiny’s Essex home were clearly also pulled together by stronger forces.

Six of the seven women were originally from the former Czechoslovakia; most left, against the odds, in the mid-1980s when the country was under communist control.

They gathered around the kitchen table working in pairs at the manually operated meat grinder with a special cookie press attachment, pushing out lengths of dough in a decorative spritz shape which they then curved into crescents and placed on baking sheets.

“At home we would have had a meat grinder dedicated to cookies,” said Essex resident Blanka Caha, who had brought her grinder set-up for everyone to use.

Each woman had made and brought her own dough for this particular cookie with variations by family or region. As they formed, baked and dipped the cookies in a big bowl of powdered and vanilla sugars to coat them, they bantered about the “correct” recipe and recalled memories of Christmas from their youth.

“When we were growing up, we’d bake with our families,” Ursiny explained. “But none of us has family here. This is our extended family. It’s just very special to get together for the holidays with people who speak our language and who share some of the same stories.”

Recipes among friends

The different doughs for the crescent (rohlicky) cookies all contained powdered sugar, flour, ground nuts and butter. Some variations included eggs and baking powder for a bit of lift and one was flavored with coconut.

“Some think walnut is traditional but I think almond is traditional,” said Ursiny with a smile.

Caha was taking the trays of her cookies straight from the oven and dipping the warm cookies in a big bowl of sugar. Dasha Zentrichova of Burlington said that she preferred to let hers cool before dipping them.

Sitting at the kitchen table, Lida Dvorak of Essex was rolling her dough by hand and then shaping them into crescents. “I use eggs and almost no sugar,” she said. “And my mom would kill me if she saw me using a meat grinder for these. I use that to make a different cookie.”

(Page 2 of 6)

“My mother always made 12 kinds, but I only make five or six,” Dvorak added. “I’m not a baker but it’s fun when you can do it with friends.”

Most Czech families, the women said, bake at least seven or eight different kinds of Christmas cookies throughout the month of December to be eaten first on Christmas Eve. In America, they often give platters to friends and neighbors, but in the former Czechoslovakia every family baked their own.

Darina Mernicky of South Burlington said she makes about seven kinds. “In my family, we had four girls and we all helped my mom. That’s how we learned,” she said.

Her favorite is called medové rezy, which roughly translates to honey squares, is layers of honey-sweetened pastry sandwiched with a creamy filling and then glazed with chocolate. “Even my English-speaking grandkids know how to say that,” she said.

Mernicky and Katarina Zvarova of Stowe came to the United States from what is now Slovakia where, they said, their recipes are slightly different but similar to those of their friends from the region that became the Czech Republic.

“We use a lot of walnuts and poppy seeds,” Zvarova said.

The elaborately composed and decorated variety of cookies require a lot of time, the women agreed. A few weekends of baking might be followed by a few afternoons of frosting and constructing the final cookies.

“We would start at the beginning of December,” Ursiny said, “and then put them away to protect them so no one ate them. A few years ago, I hid them so well, I didn’t find some of them until April,” she chuckled. “They keep pretty well, but not that long.”

Her favorite is a horseshoe-shaped cookie made with an egg-yolk-enriched dough and dipped partly in chocolate. “I like to make them,” she said, “because my kids love them.”

Cultural connections

Ursiny’s 14-year-old daughter, Anna, and Veronika Fusare, 12, Zentrichova’s daughter, had taken a break to play a game in the living room by the twinkling Christmas tree.

Anna confirmed that the chocolate-dipped horseshoe was her favorite while Veronika picked an attractive and unusual cookie called a beehive, consisting of a walnut marzipan chocolate-tipped cone set on a chocolate frosted cookie base.

(Page 3 of 6)

Both have spent summers in the Czech Republic and appreciate the perspective it gives them on their own heritage and the world, they said.

“We just did culture report in school,” Veronika said, “and it feels kind of unique to have actually been there to talk about it.”

“It also helps me to learn other languages at school,” Anna added. “I can make connections.”

The girls said they have enjoyed learning how to make and decorate the cookies. Both plan to carry on the cookie-baking tradition, they said, maybe with their own twist.

“They’re Czech cookies,” Anna said, “but sometimes I like to decorate them in the American way with sprinkles.”

Sweet meeting

The girls were much younger when cookies first brought their moms together.

“We met through cookies,” Ursiny said with a smile, recalling how she saw Zentrichova’s husband, then a student at University of Vermont where Ursiny works, walking with a plate of cookies she recognized as Czech.

“She’s the baker,” Ursiny said, nodding at Zentrichova across the room. “She makes like 25 different kinds. I only make eight.”

That original connection led to friendship and then, four years ago, Ursiny, Zentrichova and Caha started the annual baking gathering, inviting other friends with Czech roots as well as one non-Czech friend this year.

“It can be lonely doing all that baking by yourself,” Ursiny said as she continued to juggle the seemingly unending flow of pans of crescent cookies in and out of her oven.

Baking Business

Although the Saturday gathering was all about crescent cookies, Zentrichova had brought a selection to show some of the variety she had already made this year, with more to come.

A platter featured a beautiful array including powder sugar-dusted, raspberry jam sandwich cookies shaped like fish, mushrooms and flowers; the unique “beehive” cookies mentioned by her daughter; small sugar-powdered, cocoa and spice shortbread cookies in a variety of shapes from mini-Madeleines to trees; and chocolate-frosted cocoa shortbread sandwich cookies topped with both flaked coconut and round white sprinkles.

(Page 4 of 6)

Many of the recipes come from her mother and grandmother and even great-grandmother, she said. She also has a drawer full of family heirloom cookie cutters and molds.

Zentrichova, who works in market research, actually ran a year-round, home-based baking business for about five years called Bohemian Cookies and Pastries offering Czech-style baked goods to local cafes and food markets including Dobra Tea and City Market.

“I knew I couldn’t make money doing it,” she said, “but I thought I could have fun with it.”

Demand was highest at Christmas, she said, and along with juggling her day job, it became too much at an already busy time of year. “I often baked until one in the morning,” she said, “and then it wasn’t fun.”

She’s happy to be baking again just for family and friends and has cut her list from a high of about 30 different cookies back to 13 this year. “It was a relief to take it back to just for fun.”

After the group gathering, Zentrichova would still make another half-dozen kinds including Florentines; a gingerbread-spiced, dried fruit-filled biscotti-style cookie and a lemon zest-flavored shortbread.

Some she would dip in chocolate although, she said, “We wouldn’t have used chocolate for cookies when I was growing up. If you could get chocolate, you would eat it; you wouldn’t waste it in baking.”

Another thing that was in relatively short supply in the communist former Czechoslovakia was religious observance, which was not encouraged, Zentrichova said.

However, “Christmas and Easter were tolerated,” she said and she has strong memories of trekking through the woods from her small town to a nearby village for midnight mass on Christmas Eve.

Three of the women also shared the Christmas Eve tradition of a whole fried carp dinner.

“You’d go the market and get a live carp and bring it home and keep it in the bathtub,” Ursiny recalled. “And then on Christmas Eve day, the father would bop it on the head.”

Zentrichova recalled “huge wooden barrels filled with carp. All the kids would go to the store and stick our fingers in the barrel and the carp would nibble on them. I loved that as a kid, although our fingers got very cold and the store owner was not happy with us.”

(Page 5 of 6)

Before the traditional carp dinner, Mernicky added that in the region of Slovakia from which she came, “We ate a thin piece of waffle with a spoonful of honey and chopped garlic. It was a mix of things with the promise of good health, a tradition from generations.”

Christmas in July

The friends estimated that between their seven batches of dough, they had made and baked several hundred crescent cookies that single Saturday afternoon, just a small portion of the baking each would do for the holiday.

“You spend so much time baking, you don’t want to eat them,” Ursiny joked.

“I’ll freeze some and take them out in July,” Zentrichova said.

Czech Christmas Cookie Recipes

Note: Czech cookie recipes are written by weight in grams for accuracy. I have included rough cup equivalents for those who do not have a scale.

In a large bowl (or on a wooden board as Dasha does it), stir together powdered sugar, ground walnuts, flour and baking powder. With your hands, work in the butter, egg and vanilla extract if using, until you have a firm dough. Form into a flattened ball, wrap well and refrigerate for several hours or overnight.

When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees and lightly grease baking sheets or line with parchment or non-stick baking mats. Take dough from fridge to bring it to room temperature. If you don’t have a cookie press attachment and meat grinder, break off walnut-size balls of dough and roll them with your hands into short ropes about three inches long, Curve into crescents and place on prepared baking sheets. Bake for about 9 to 11 minutes until cookies are lightly golden (the color doesn’t change much) and set to the touch. Don’t overbake.

(Page 6 of 6)

Traditionally these are then gently immersed into a mixture of powdered sugar and vanilla sugar. Some bakers do them while they are still warm; others prefer to wait until they have cooled. After they are cooled, you can also dip one half of each crescent in melted chocolate. Dasha Zentrichova uses a mixture of 100 grams of chocolate chips to 30 grams of shortening to make it easier to work with and ensure a shiny set. Place dipped cookies on waxed paper and refrigerate to set the chocolate. Makes about 40-50 cookies.

Free Press testing note: Use the vanilla extract in the dough if you do not have vanilla sugar for dusting the baked cookies. You can buy vanilla sugar at local Eastern European markets such as Euro Market on Williston Road in South Burlington. You also make vanilla sugar yourself but submerging a whole split vanilla bean pod and its sticky seeds in a couple cups of sugar in a sealed jar for a week or so.

To finish: powdered sugar to dust or melted chocolate to dip as in Vanilla c.

In a large bowl (or on a wooden board as Dasha does it), whisk together flour, powdered sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves and allspice. In a small bowl, whisk together eggs and honey and then, with your hands, work the honey and eggs into the flour mixture until you have a sticky dough. Add a little more flour if needed to form dough into a smooth (but still sticky) flattened rectangle, wrap well and refrigerate for several hours or overnight.

When ready to bake, take dough from refrigerator, preheat oven to 350 degrees and lightly grease baking sheets or line with parchment or non-stick baking mats. In a small bowl, stir together dried fruit, nuts and chocolate with jam to moisten. Divide dough into 3 equal pieces and roll each out on a well-floured surface into a rectangle about 10 by 8 inches. (It will still be fairly sticky.)

Carefully transfer rolled dough to a cookie sheet and arrange a third of fruit mixture lengthwise down the center of the dough. Fold each side over to make a long roll and flip over so seam is underneath. Tuck ends of dough under to seal. Brush roll with egg white and water mixture to provide a glossy finish. Repeat with remaining dough, using two baking sheets for the three rolls since they do expand.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes until golden brown and set to the touch. Cool and then cut into half-inch slices. Decorate with a dusting of powdered sugar or dip half of each slice in melted chocolate per above. Makes about 60 cookies.